


In Search of the Truth

by autisticblueteam



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Non-binary Agent Connecticut, RvB Pick 'n' Mix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-16
Updated: 2020-11-16
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:33:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27595541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/autisticblueteam/pseuds/autisticblueteam
Summary: Dylan believes in the truth above all else. It’s why she does what she does. People deserve to know the truth. But what if that truth would do more harm than good? What then?
Relationships: Agent Connecticut & Dylan Andrews
Comments: 1
Kudos: 9
Collections: RvB Pick 'n' Mix





	In Search of the Truth

**Author's Note:**

> Written for fanvsfic's Pick ‘n’ Mix event on tumblr. I got really hooked on the idea of Dylan and Connie meeting so here we are.
> 
> (Connie is referred to with they/them pronouns throughout, because this is written from Dylan’s perspective and I headcanon Connie as non-binary using she/they, with they used primarily by strangers.)

Dylan arrived home to a dark, silent apartment and cats weaving around her feet.

Her shoulders slumped, her duffel falling to the ground beside the door with a quiet thud. “Hey, Purritzer; hey Mittens. I just got back and you’re already trying to trip me over, huh?”

The cats meowed, rubbing up against Dylan’s calf. Sighing, she crouched down and gave them each a scratch behind the ears before ushering them ahead, following them into the pitch-black kitchen to give them fresh food and water.

Down the hall, she heard James snoring.

It had been a long trip. The Project Freelancer story was the largest story she had worked on in _months_. ‘Colourful Space Marines Stop Corruption’ made for a snappy headline and a complicated article. There had been eight separate interviews to conduct with characters who were as colourful as their armour and weaving what she learned together into a coherent narrative of events proved… challenging.

A challenge she was perfectly capable of, make no mistake, but a challenge, nonetheless.

One that was largely to do with how many holes the story seemed to contain. Dylan never once felt that she was getting the complete picture, even after talking to every single one of the rainbow soldiers trying to gather all the pieces. Many of them simply didn’t seem to have the answers she was seeking, whilst others…

Agent Carolina had been… combative, to say the least. Whatever had happened in that facility was personal, for her, and no amount of carefully phrased questions could slip around the heavily guarded wall she put between herself and Dylan. A simple question about why the dog tags she wore around her throat contained the name of another agent—Agent Connecticut—rather than her own, lead to their conversation being cut short and Agent Washington proved just as useless. Any mention of other agents resulted in immediate stonewalling.

Of course, that only served to pique Dylan’s curiosity further.

So, what was meant to be only two days away quickly turned into almost two weeks.

James wasn’t happy about it, but, well, that was the job. Sure, she could have given him more of a heads up, but she was already out on the assignment and coming back home just didn’t make sense. He understood that, she was sure he did.

Of course, usually, he’d wait up for her on the night of her return. This was the first time in her memory that she’d come home to an empty front room, no James on the couch. But it _was_ late, later than she usually got in.

So why did it still feel like there was someone else awake in the house, beside her?

Dylan shook her head. She was expecting it, that’s all.

She fixed herself a mug of coffee and made her way to her office, thumbing the drive in her pocket. Sliding into her chair, sinking into the familiar depression in the leather, she pulled the drive out and inserted it into her data-pad. The screen lit up.

Her contact in the UNSC Judge Advocate Corps had come through. What they had given her wasn’t complete, either, but it served as a starting point. From there, a discreet trip out to the facility where it had all ended, some quick-thinking, two dozen acronyms and a good getaway plan was all she needed to get what she was looking for.

Agent Carolina and Agent Washington were far from the only agents of Project Freelancer to be instrumental in its downfall, that much had become clear.

Setting her cup down on her coaster, Dylan booted up her PC and picked up her data-pad. A simple flick of her stylus synced the latest copy of her article with the PC and loaded it into the screen. On her data-pad, she began to flick through the files and take notes. She’d skimmed them during her journey back, but it would take days to properly understand their contents and how they played into the events of the last few weeks. Or, as Dylan suspected, the last few _years_.

This would take a while. Dylan settled in for a long night of work and plenty of coffee.

She wasn’t even half-way through her first mug when the atmosphere changed.

The hairs on the back of her arm rose. The air in the room felt… stiff, somehow, and a pressure settled in the back of her skull. Dylan cocked her head, idly, tapping her stylus against her lip.

 _Huh,_ she thought, _curious._

“Are you going to show yourself, or just stay in the shadows watching me ominously like we’re in an old noir?” she said aloud, casting a glance back over her shoulder.

No response. No sign of a looming figure.

Maybe she was just being paranoid.

Dylan reached under her desk, blindly, fingers dancing over the edge of a secure compartment. “I should warn you. I have an M6 handy.”

Footsteps, all but silent, came from her left and Dylan’s head snapped towards them. Movement in the darkness, walking up the hall outside her office. She fumbled for the release on the compartment, only to stop when the silhouette of the intruder came into view.

They stood no taller than five foot four. Not the most concrete reason to no longer fear for your life, no, but it wasn’t just that. There was something about the way they approached, all light-footed grace and the poise of someone who had no fear of any weapon she could wield at them. They stopped at the threshold and came no closer, leaning against the doorframe with their arms folded over their chest.

In the dim light of her desk lamp, light that barely brushed the edges of the room, stood a ghost.

“Dylan Andrews,” they said, not a question, but a statement. “Reporter for Interstellar Daily. Three-time receiver of the Intercolonial Press Award, looking to be nominated for a fourth time for your upcoming piece on Project Freelancer. Married to James Adler for coming up on a decade. No living family.”

Dylan’s narrowed her eyes, her hand never leaving the underside of her desk. “What is this? A threat?”

“No,” the intruder said, shrugging. “Just laying the facts on the table. There’s more I could list.”

“I’m sure there is.” Dylan frowned. “Agent Connecticut, right? The double agent.”

CT brushed their hair back behind their ear, the light shifting across their features. They looked older than in the photo in the file, of course; weathered around the edges of an otherwise youthful face, a distinctive scar carved through their lips. They wore no armour, only dark, practical clothes and nonchalant assuredness.

“I’m impressed,” they said, cocking their head. “You might know more than I thought you did.”

Dylan rolled her eyes. “Look, I don’t have time for some ONI spook’s crypticism. Why are you here? To kill me?”

CT… laughed. They rested their fist against their forehead and _laughed._

“The only weapon I have on me is my combat knife, it’s in my boot,” they said, kicking their heel against their opposite ankle. “And I’m not ONI. Not even close. You’re not the first to make that assumption and you won’t be the last, but I was _never_ ONI.”

Dylan narrowed her eyes. CT wasn’t lying, not as far as she could tell—and she liked to think she _could_ tell, that her ability to read people was as honed as it ever was. CT didn’t look away, nor shift on their feet. There was no tell-tale bulge of a holster on their hip, nor the slight shift in their posture that would point to a weapon down the waistband of their pants.

So no, they weren’t here to kill her.

“Then why _are_ you here? According to all records, you’re dead,” Dylan said, eyes flicking to the data-pad on her desk. CT’s gaze trailed behind, meeting Dylan’s own again only after a long, deliberate delay.

“I’m here to talk,” they said, breaking the eye contact almost as soon as it had started. “Can I come in, or are you going to shoot me if I try?”

Dylan sat back, finally withdrawing her hand from beneath the desk. She held both hands up.

CT stepped into the room. There was no chair on the other side of Dylan’s desk—she found that it tended to invite people to sit and talk, when the space was for work, not chit-chat—but that didn’t deter CT. They pulled themself to sit on Dylan’s desk itself, legs crossed.

The position exposed the specialised sheath on the side of their boot.

“Oh, by all means, make yourself at home,” Dylan said, dryly, folding her arms. “First you break into my apartment, and now you sit on my desk.”

“There’s no chair,” CT said with a shrug. Leaning back on their hands, they sighed. “Look, Dylan… you’re a smart woman. You know who I am. You know what I did. Finding that information isn’t easy, I wasn’t lying when I said I was impressed that you know as much as you do.”

“And what do you think I know?” Dylan asked, brow raised.

“I think you know that there’s more to the story of Project Freelancer’s demise than meets the eye,” CT said. “I think you know that everything that happened in that facility was set in motion years ago. I think that drive,” they nodded towards it, “contains classified files from that old Freelancer facility that you shouldn’t have had access to but broke into anyway.”

Dylan blinked. She’d only _just_ been there, how did—

“Keeping up with who’s poking around in Project Freelancer’s business is _my_ business, Dylan Andrews,” CT said, as if reading her damn mind. “You managed to dig deeper than most do, I have to give you that. Was stealing files part of your assignment? Is this what your boss wanted from you?”

Dylan scoffed. Like Carlos would ever _tell_ her to do something like that; she was sure her antics were responsible for half the man’s medical expenses, but he could _never_ argue with her results.

“I’m an investigative journalist,” Dylan said, eyes narrowing again. She stood up, chair pushing back behind her, and CT’s gaze followed her. “That’s what I do, I _investigate._ Anyone can write a puff piece on an event for mass media as soon as the story breaks, but not everyone can get to the _truth_.”

“And you’ll do whatever it takes to find it, I know,” CT said, with almost a hint of a smile on their lips. “How many times were you injured during the war? A dozen? More? How many times since, how many days away from home? All in search of the truth. It’s an admirable goal, I’m not denying that; it’s just very easy to lose yourself to. Quite literally, I died because of it.”

“You’re alive.”

“Not as far as anyone else is concerned I’m not,” CT said. They tilted their head, the lamplight casting stark shadows across one side of their face. “And I need it to stay that way.”

 _Ah_.

“So,” Dylan said, slowly sitting back down, “that’s what this is about.”

“Not only that, but… yes. That’s part of it.” CT sat up. Their hands settled on their ankles and Dylan watched them a little closer, wary of how close that was to their holster. “Tell me, Dylan, to the public, what is Project Freelancer?”

“An experimental program gone wrong. A corrupt military organisation that misappropriated vital UNSC resources during the war and violated the Cole Protocol,” Dylan said. “That’s it. That’s the whole story as it’s broken so far. But it goes deeper, doesn’t it?”

“You know it does.”

The data-pad sat on the desk may as well have been an elephant for all the subtlety its presence in the conversation had. Dylan didn’t look at it directly, but the light lingered in her periphery and CT was ignoring it in a way that somehow made it all the clearer that they hadn’t forgotten it for a second.

The device was laden with information that people deserved to know. Crimes that had happened on the UNSC’s watch and which were sure to get brushed under the rug unless someone broke the story. Someone like _her._

Dylan’s jaw flexed. “And yet you _don’t_ want me to tell anyone.”

CT sighed. They hopped off the desk and Dylan raised an eyebrow, the other lifting with it when CT grabbed the hem of their shirt and started pulling it up.

Dylan opened her mouth to ask what the _hell_ they were doing, only to freeze when she saw the gnarly scar bisecting CT’s abdomen and the edge of another that stretched up their chest.

“These are what happened to me the first time I tried to get the truth out. Granted, these were given to me by a dead woman on the orders of the Project itself, but…” They flicked their tongue over their lips, across the smaller but no less noticeable scar there. “This one was a gift from someone who wanted me to shut up long after the Project thought I was dead.”

“Who?”

CT gave her a look.

“Right. You won’t tell me.”

“Not right now, no. It’d only put you at risk. Look, people have died for less than what you have on that handy little drive of yours,” CT said, jerking their head towards the desk. “And I know all good journalists are wanted by some organisation or another, but I don’t think you actually want to _die_ , Dylan Andrews. Or to come back from one of your trips to find your husband dead in your place.”

James’ snoring punctuated the quiet that followed, as if CT’s words alone had somehow made it louder.

Dylan swallowed thickly.

“Fine,” she said, folding her arms and shifting in her seat. “Then what am I supposed to do?”

CT dropped their shirt and hopped backwards onto the edge of the desk. “Delete everything you took from that facility and run the story you have _without_ it. If you do that, I’ll even answer some of your questions, so long as you _promise_ you’ll keep it to yourself.”

“Is that supposed to be a bribe?” Dylan asked, brow raised.

CT shrugged. “You want to know the truth and I can give you it. Most of it, at least.”

Dylan sighed. Keeping her eye on CT in her periphery, she grabbed her data-pad and deleted the transferred copies of the files.

“And your back-ups,” CT said, before she could put it back down.

Goddammit.

She deleted the back-ups, and her back-ups of the back-ups, under the pressure of CT’s much too knowing gaze. Once she was done, they plucked the drive from its slot and slipped it into their bra, well out of reach.

“Thank you,” they said, their expression… softer, somehow. “I promise you, if I could let you release this, I would. But there are people who would be hurt as a result, not just me, not just you.”

“I get it. I don’t like it, but I get it,” Dylan said, shaking her head. Dragging her hands over her face, she inhaled and exhaled deeply. “I’m not about to put a story over people’s lives, but the things in those files… the truth should be out there. I trust you don’t disagree with the principle of that.”

“I don’t,” CT confirmed. “One day it might be safe to share and when that day comes, you can run the story. _You_ can be the one to tell the galaxy about the hidden atrocities of Project Freelancer and beyond. But _only_ when that day comes.”

“How am I supposed to know when that is?”

“You won’t,” CT said simply. “But I will.”

“Right,” Dylan said, dryly, “because _that’s_ not foreboding at _all_. I’m not too thrilled that someone broke into my apartment once, I’d rather this didn’t become a recurring event.”

CT shook their head and tossed Dylan a communicator. Dylan caught it, looking back at them curiously.

“Single use,” CT said, by way of explanation. Dylan blinked. “In case you need to know for certain if you’ve found the right time.”

“Right.” Dylan rolled the device in her hand. “Does this make you my source?”

“Let’s… not formalise it.” CT’s brow wrinkled, something indiscernible flashing through their eyes. “You can think of the rest of this conversation as an interview, if you like, but I hope you have a good memory. Because you don’t get to record it.”

“You’re killing me here,” Dylan groaned. CT just smiled.

“You have an hour to ask me as much as you like,” they said, pulling their legs back up onto the desk and crossing them. “Then, I have to go. You won’t see me again after that unless you decide to be stupid, or you use that communicator.”

Dylan glanced at the clock. 0300 already. James still snoring down the hall. He wouldn’t notice if she didn’t come to bed for another hour, right?

“Alright. An hour. And I can ask anything?”

“You can ask anything, but I may not _answer_ everything.”

Dylan chuckled quietly. “Of course not.”

For the next hour, Dylan interviewed CT with the same intensity as she would anyone else. She probed and prodded and coaxed CT into telling her more than they initially let on whilst CT took it all in stride, answering her questions with a frankness that came from time and distance.

Turns out, Project Freelancer was infinitely more fucked than even files could show. CT talked about their old teammates, those they’d cared for and lost; they talked about those they’d barely known but that the Project had snuffed out as if they had been nothing more than inconveniences; they talked about their own ‘death’, the months of running away from the inevitable.

As promised, they didn’t answer everything, but the things they didn’t answer told Dylan almost as much as those they did. There was more to this than Project Freelancer and some Insurrectionists and whatever that ‘more’ _was_ , it was exactly the reason CT now feared for their life and the lives of others.

“Project Freelancer is dead,” CT said, close to the end of their time. Mittens had since climbed up into their lap, always a cuddler even with strangers, and they pet her with an idle, soothing regularity. “But its enemies aren’t.”

No matter how much Dylan wanted to ask what that meant, why the enemies of Project Freelancer were as much of a risk to CT as the Project itself, she didn’t. She nodded and accepted the explanation and moved onto the next question, though her eyes lingered a little too long on the scar over CT’s lips.

The hour passed and Dylan carefully extracted Mittens from CT’s lap, letting them stand up and brush the fur off their legs. The sound of snoring down the hall was as loud as ever and Dylan wondered, idly, if she would even mention this to James in the morning.

“It’s going to be a good article,” CT said, gesturing at the PC screen that still held the latest draft. “Quite the headline, too. Not sure how many of them are actually marines, but…”

There was the quirk of a smile at the corner of their lips and a glint of amusement in their eye and Dylan shook her head with a quite chuckle.

“It does the job,” she said. A beat of silence fell between them and they both stared at the photograph, of colourfully armoured soldiers surrounding the solitary official in black, before Dylan broke it again. “Are you sure you don’t want to see your friends? I can get in contact with—”

“No,” CT said, almost too quickly. “It’s better for everyone if I stay dead for now. Maybe one day.”

Dylan’s head tilted. “Seems like you say that about a lot of things.”

“If I’ve learned one thing whilst being ‘dead’, it’s patience,” CT said, walking around the desk, heading towards the door. “Remember what I said, Dylan. I wouldn’t have come here if it wasn’t serious.”

“I know. I won’t say anything.”

“Thank you,” CT said, and Dylan knew they meant it. They stopped at the threshold of the room again, bathed in the dim light of the desk lamp, and smiled. “I promise I won’t break into your apartment again.”

“How did you even get in here in the first place?” Dylan asked.

CT tapped their nose. “Don’t worry, I’m closing that vulnerability on my way out.”

“That’s not at all reassuring, I hope you realise that.”

CT just raised a hand in a wave and stepped back into the darkness, beyond where the lamp could reach. A silhouette, they disappeared down the hall and vanished into the night.

Mittens rubbed up against Dylan’s leg and meowed.

“Yeah, I don’t know what to make of that either, Mittens,” Dylan said, crouching down to scratch her head. “Come on, let’s go join James and your sister in bed. I assume that’s where she’s got to.”

Mittens meowed again and Dylan stood up, saving her draft and putting the PC to sleep.

CT wasn’t in the hallway and there were no signs of open doors or windows—though, considering they were several stories up, the latter would have been concerning for entirely different reasons.

Dylan was half-way through changing when the communicator fell out onto the floor.

Brow knitted, she picked it up and set it on her bedside table. She’d have to put it in the drawer tomorrow when she went to finish the article.

There was a story to get out, after all.

The article ran, Dylan won her award, and life moved on. The news cycle didn’t stop for anyone and the disappearance of the Reds and Blues shortly after their initial fame was lost in a wave of post-war alien conflicts, internal tensions, and the boring day-to-day controversies that could never hold Dylan’s interest for long.

And then, the Reds and Blues did it again—Malcolm Hargrove, CEO of Charon industries, the chairman over the oversight subcommittee… and genocidal capitalist with his own paramilitary organisation. Chorus, a long forgotten Outer Colony assumed glassed in the Great War, brought back into the forefront.

Dylan hadn’t thought much about what CT had told her, in the years in-between. The communicator came with her everywhere, but her life didn’t— _couldn’t_ —revolve around one story. She had other leads to chase, a marriage to try and fail to save, a life to live. She’d been working on another article when the news broke about Hargrove and Charon and it wasn’t until she read the story for herself that she realised what it meant.

Charon Industries and Project Freelancer, two peas in a rotten pod fighting for space.

The enemy that CT had talked about was now as dead as Project Freelancer itself, and yet…

And yet Dylan didn’t feel like it was time.

She thought about it, one night, out on assignment. Sat with the communicator in her hand and considered turning it on, asking CT if _now_ was the time to tell the galaxy the truth.

After ten minutes, she put it away.

A year later, the Reds and Blues were branded as terrorists and Dylan found herself once again throwing herself down a rabbit hole into Project Freelancer’s past to find out the truth. Far away from home and staring down at the husk of the _Mother of Invention_ , Dylan re-read the names of all the dead and missing agents and pulled out the communicator.

For ten long seconds, she was sure it had died.

But it went through.

“I think somebody’s killing Freelancers,” she said to the silence on the other end of the line. “Think it’s time that one of them came back from the dead?”

The communicator crackled. Dylan opened her mouth—

“ _Yeah_ ,” CT said, “ _yeah, I think it is._ ”


End file.
